Drafts

Today I wanted to speak about phone usage before bed. My parents always told me to never bring my phone in my bedroom, and I always found that funny that they would tell me that. Now that I am older I understand why they told me this. Not only does it disturb your sleep but it also is very bad for your eyes. Looking at a bright screen before bed disturbs your sleep waves, and it disturbs your deepest sleep phase, also known as Rapid Eye Movement sleep. This part of sleep is very important as it can help develop the brain of an enfant. It is also the part of our sleep where we dream which takes up about two hours.  recommended by doctors, it is important to get rid of your phone two hours before bed. this will ensure a good night sleep.  Lastly, it is important to not look at your screen before bed, because the blue lights are too heavy on your eyes. Blue light has a negative affect on your eyes and it is important to put your phone on “yellow light “ night mode settings if you do plan on using it before bed.

The evolution of mitochondria in eukaryotic cells is something of a mystery. Many scientists are not completely sure where mitochondria came from, but the best solution out there now is that mitochondria were once separate organisms from cells, something along the lines of a type of bacteria or archaea. Scientists believe that a prokaryote ancestor of mitochondria was consumed by a eukaryotic cell at some point in time, and the prokaryote and eukaryotic cell developed a symbiotic relationship. Through evolution, the prokaryote eventually lost characteristics that it did not need outside of its function in the cell, and became what we now know as the mitochondrion. This being just a theory, it does not guarantee that this is where mitochondria came from, but as of now, it's our best guess that can explain the properties of mitochondria and its behavior in the cell.

Biodiversity offsetting is when a loss in biodiversity is then compensated for by a gain. This should result in no net loss at a minimum and if possible lead to a net gain in biodiversity. This loss in biodiversity is often due to human activity such as development. Biodiversity offsetting can be measured by measuring the species richness and species evenness. As an undergraduate student that is majoring in Biology with a focus on ecology, special attention is given to biodiversity. Biodiversity is a major determinant to the overall function and dynamics of ecosystems. Biodiversity can be measured using the Shannon-Wiener Index. When discussing a loss in biodiversity that is supplemented by a gain, a controversial question comes into view. Is it morally correct to experience a loss caused by human development that is replaced by a supplemental gain even if that gain is not the same as what was lost? In the grand scheme of things biodiversity in itself is what is important, not the individuals that make up the whole. Ultimately, this means that biodiversity offsetting should be measured by species richness as well as species evenness.

From personal experience and random polling of people I have come in control with, I have noticed that it is more likely that someone with peanut allergies is male and not female. Off the top of my head, I can only think one a single girl I have met with a peanut allergy, and she developed that one later in life due to a hyperactive immune system disease that caused her to become allergic to almost all foods she ate. However, I know Steven, Anthony, Jack, and the list goes on of males that are all allergic to peanuts and seem to have either had the allergy since birth or developed it in a moment that compromised their immune system. For example, Anthony claims to have become allergic to nuts after a dog licked his face as child. Steven has born with a deathly allergy to peanuts. 

I began to research why this is, thinking that it may somehow be a gender-linked trait that is recessive X chromosome and therefore men, having a single X chromosome, would be more likely to inherit it and show the phenotype. Upon beginning to unveil the traits and data found in various articles, the trend seems to be more deeply connected to sociology than genetics. A study by Kotz et. al. that examined data of peanut allergy diagnoses collected in England between the years 2001 and 2005 found trends of socioeconomic and gender biases in the diagnosis processes. The rates and percentages of peanut allergies have been previously reported, but now the question is who with the allergy is getting medically identified. It turns out, males are more likely to be diagnosed than females. This is besides the numbers of people who actually have the allergy. The study also used census data correlated with the postal code of the patient to calculate the relative deprivaties in the patients life based on local unemployment, homeownership values, and others. This showed that those in a more well-to-do area were more likely to be diagnosed with a peanut allergy than those with less opportunity. This may be controlled by a hidden variable of medical access and people with higher incomes are more likely to access medical treatment for minor allergic reactions than people with lower incomes are. 

Kotz, Daniel et al. 2011. Incidence, prevalence, and trends of general practitioner–recorded diagnosis of peanut allergy in England, 2001 to 2005

I am intrigued by psychology, even though I am a biology major. One thing I want to learn more about is anxiety. My mom has anxiety and I would like to know more about it. Firstly, there are many kinds of anxiety disorders. I wanted to only hghlight two as the list would be infinite to name all the anxiety types. The main one is general anxiety disorder.  This kind of disorder proves thatt the person will feel anxiety everyday or most days for at least 6 months. The things they will be anxious about can be anything, such as health, work, social interactions or just small thngs that happen during the day. These fears and anxieties can cause significant problems in areas of their life such as social interactions, grades, or athletic performance. Panic disorders on the other hands happen by panic attacks. These panic attacks come from tightness in the chest and the individual can just feel anxious for a triggering reason or it may be for no reason at all. During an attack, the individual may be screaming, trembling, shaking, hyperventilating, etc. 

Small aquatic ecosystems and wetlands are critical contributors to both freshwater biodiversity and ecosystem services (Williams et al., 2004; Verdonschot et al., 2011). In fact, ponds contribute the most to freshwater biodiversity, housing more species, more unique species, and more rare species than other small aquatic ecosystems (Williams et al., 2004). Only recently has this evidence come to light and with it has come a growing need to explore anthropogenic effects on small aquatic ecosystems, in order to reverse and prevent future damage to these oases of biodiversity (Biggs et al. 2016). Though the University of Massachusetts Amherst did collaborate with the MA Department of Environmental protection (MassDEP), MA Office of Coast Zone Management (MassCZM), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on a project to assess and monitor local aquatic ecosystem integrity, it was focused on forested wetlands, coastal salt marshes, and wadable fresh streams (web reference 1) and was designed to show that indices of biotic integrity (IBIs) could be developed directly from the empirical data (web reference 2). In this proposal we concentrate our research on ponds as their contribution to local biodiversity and anthropogenic stressors affecting their health have not yet been studied. We chose plant diversity as our first measure of ecosystem health due to it being a strong component of the biotic diversity parameter found in the ecosystem integrity (EI) framework (Müller, 2005) used by the European branch of the international long-term ecological research (ILTER) network to determine ecosystem health (Haase et al., 2018). In addition,the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON) that uses essential biodiversity variables (EBVs) (Haase et al., 2018) to monitor changes in biodiversity on a global scale uses plant diversity as a key taxonomic parameter to measure community diversity (Schmeller et al., 2018). Thus, since plant diversity is a point of intersection between the two major frameworks that aim to determine ecosystem health, it is likely to serve as a strong indicator of the health of the small aquatic ecosystems that are the focus of this study.

Medical Athropology has a midterm assignment which involves writing a paper revolving around a sickness episode. This can involve me, or someone else. A sickness episode here means an experience with sickness an individual has, in this case trying to highlight not just the physical symptoms alone, but the process of disgnosis, treatment, and the concepts of sickness vs. disease. The differences between sickness, disease, and illness have been a main topic of the course so far. It focuses greatly on humanity and medicine, and how ethnomedicine should be a main part of the modern medical system across the world. 

I have decided to write about the struggles my mother, grandmother, and I have dealt with during our lives with endometriosis. It is often seen reoccuring every generation in families, suggesting is has a strong genetic predisposition. This disease has been increasingly more common in the last decade, not because of increased prevalance, but due to better diagnosis methods and the strive to have better practitioner-patient relationships. Endometriosis is a disorder where the tissue lining the inside uterus (the endometrium) grows in different locations in the body where it should not be growing. The disease can be divided into four stages, stage one being minor prevalence with few or no lesions, up to stage four in which the tissue has spread all over the body (not limited to the abdominal cavity) and has resulted in a multitude of lesions, wounds, and scars in these locations. Endometriosis was first identified by modern science in the mid 1800's, but was first described around 4,000 years ago. 

The mitigation of biological damage by economic and physical development is imperative as a method of conservation. As a biology major at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, I am well versed in the concepts of biodiversity and ecology. Through this experience, I have become familiar with the concept of a biodiversity index. This index is easily calculable, simply dividing the number of species in a set area by the number of individuals within that area. A simple calculation before a project is undertaken, followed by remediation of biodiversity to match or surpass this index after completion would be an easy regulation to enforce. Some, however, would rather tie biodiversity to an economic value, gaining conservation credits that they can then sell to biodiversity offsetting brokers. Not only is this method needlessly elaborate, it ultimately yields poor results and, as economical ecologist Clive L. Splash (2015) commented, "requires that society start bulldozing biodiversity"(p. 544). Tying biodiversity offsetting to a simple biodiversity index is not only a simpler, effective method of compensating for environmental damage to diversity, but vital if we truly seek to reverse the damage industry has done to our environment.

Spash, C. L. (2015). Bulldozing biodiversity: The economics of offsets and trading-in Nature. Biological Conservation, 192, 541–551. doi: 10.1016/j.biocon.2015.07.037

If two species are isolated due to a physical barrier, however, travel between the two sites remains viable the population is said to be a metapopulation. In other words two or more populations spatial separated with some level of interaction. Populations such as these face different challenges and are affected by factors differently to a classic population. Two variables can be measured of a metapopulation that is different from classic populations, C, and E. C is the colonization rate of the various patches of habitable land and E is the extinction rate of the populations. When C is greater than E then the metapopulation can survive for long periods of time. Any other relationship results in the eventual extinction of the population. When determining the relationship a metapopulation has scientists consider two factors. The first is Isolation. The degree to which a habitable patch is isolated from the rest of the patches will affect both the colonization and extinction rate. A highly isolated patch will have a much lower colonization rate due to it being hard to reach or find by immigrating individuals. Simultaneously, the extinction rate will be higher because a small isolated population is more susceptible to extinction events. The other factor as mentioned in the previous sentence is the size of the population at a specific location. 

Plant hormones, also known as phytohormones, act similarly to hormones found in animals. They can be peptides, steroids, or other small molecules that in some way affect responses in a plant. There are many factors hormones influence including growth, germination and cell fate, to name a few. After studying hormones and their pathways, we now know-how hormones originate and what their eventual outcomes can be. A hormone is initially synthesized, using a tightly regulated system, at a specific spot in the plant. The synthesis tends to occur near the areas of use. After synthesis a plant may conjugate the hormone to inactivate and store it for later use instead of having it degraded and needing to produce another later. Once created the hormone needs to be transported to where it will be used. The plant uses both transport through the phloem and xylem, as well as transport proteins between cells. This way the hormone can travel larger distances and cover local patches. Once at the targeted site, a receptor specifically designed for the molecule will bind and activate. The activation causes a signaling chain that eventually reaches an effector which responds to this stimulus. A response could be genomic and induce transcription to produce a change or an activation/ inactivation of pre-existing proteins.